Various global or local communications networks (the Internet, the World Wide Web, local area networks and the like) offer a user a vast amount of information. The information includes a multitude of contextual topics, such as but not limited to, news and current affairs, maps, company information, financial information and resources, traffic information, games and entertainment related information. Users use a variety of client devices (desktop, laptop, notebook, smartphone, tablets and the like) to have access to rich content (like images, audio, video, animation, and other multimedia content from such networks).
The user can access the information available on the Internet by several means. The given user can access a particular resource directly, either by typing an address of the resource (typically an URL or Universal Resource Locator, such as www.webpage.com, which is a fictitious URL provided for illustration purposes only) or by clicking a link in an e-mail or in another network resource. This is particularly useful when the user knows what the resource she or he is interested in.
Alternatively, the given user may conduct a search using a search engine to locate a resource of interest. The latter is particularly suitable in those circumstances, where the given user knows a topic of interest, but does not know the exact address of the resource she is interested in. There are numerous search engines available to the user. Some of them are considered to be general purpose search engines (such as Yandex™, Google™, Yahoo™ and the like). Others are considered to be vertical search engines—i.e. search engines dedicated to a particular topic of search—such as Momondo™ search engine dedicated to searching flights. Irrespective of which search engine is used, the search engine is generally configured to receive a search query from a user, to perform a search and to return a ranked search engine results page (SERP) to the user.
When accessing the particular web site or conducting the search, the user can be presented with generic content or personalized content. The generic content is the content that would be shown to any user accessing the particular resource without taking into account user-specific parameters, such as user interests, user interaction history and the like. Personalized content is a type of content that is specifically personalized for the given user, based on predicted or known user interest parameters.
For example, the search result ranking can be generic (using a generic search engine result ranking algorithm) or personalized for the given user (i.e. ranked at least in part based on the information known about the given user, such as past queries, past search result interactions and the like). By the same token, a given network resource can provide generic content and personalized content to the user. Personalized content can take many forms, such as a targeted message incorporated into the content of the web site, the targeted message having been selected for the given user as a relevant message based on certain information known about the given user.
The targeted message can be provided by a provider of the generic content of the given network resource or, alternatively, it can come from a third-party source and inserted into the generic content otherwise available on the network resource.
With reference to FIG. 1, there is depicted a typical prior art system (not numbered) for delivering personalized content to a user 104 of an electronic device 102 over a communication network 106. To that end, coupled to the communication network 106 are a content provider server 108 and a personalized content provider server 110. Let it now be assumed that the user 104 is desirous of accessing a network resource 112 hosted by the content provider server 108. To that end, the electronic device 102 can execute a browser, such as a GOOGLE™ browser, a YANDEX™ browser, a SAFARI™ browser and the like. Let is also be assumed that the user 104 types in a URL address associated with the network resource 112 (such as, as an example, www.example-address.com, which is a fictitious URL provided for illustration purposes only).
In response to the user 104 attempting to access the network resource 112, the electronic device 102 generates a resource request 120 in accordance with a suitable communication protocol and transmits it, via the communication network 106, to the content provider server 108. The content provider server 108 receives the resource request 120 and determines that the network resource 112 is what the user 104 is looking for (based on the URL, for example, the process known as “address resolving”). The content provider server 108 determines that the network resource 112 contains a generic portion and a personalized portion. The content provider server 108 can further determine that the content of the generic portion is stored by the content provider server 108 and that the content for the personalized portion is stored by the personalized content provider server 110. To that end, the content provider server 108 sends a personalized content request 122 via the communication network 106 (or a separate network, as the case may be) to the personalized content provider server 110. The personalized content request 122 includes inter alia an indication of a user identifier and/or an indication of user interests associated with the user 104.
Based on the user identifier and/or the user interests, the personalized content provider server 110 selects content for the personalized content portion and transmits a personalized content portion data 124, via the communication network 106, to the content provider server 108. The personalized content portion data 124 can, for example, contain a script for embedding into the personalized portion of the network resource 112, the script, when executed on the electronic device 102, for downloading the personalized content from the personalized content provider server 110.
US patent application 2016/0063578 (published on Mar. 3, 2016 to Carasso and assigned to Adsupply Inc.) discloses an adblocking bypass system for ensuring that advertisements are loaded and presented on a user device running one or more adblockers. The adblocking bypass system is comprised of a bypass loader and a bypass proxy. The bypass loader is a component that is embedded within content publisher content. When the content publisher content is downloaded and parsed by a user device, the bypass loader executes by detecting the presence of any adblocker on the user device. If found, the bypass loader forwards any blocked advertisement calls to the bypass proxy. The bypass proxy retrieves the requested advertisements and returns them to the bypass loader which then reintroduces the advertisements in final content presentation or rendering. The bypass proxy may also modify the content publisher content by replacing any blocked advertisement calls embedded within the content with calls to the bypass proxy.
US patent application 2017/0109797 (published on Apr. 20, 2017 to Boffa et al and assigned to Akamai Technologies Inc.) discloses a server-side technique to detect and mitigate client-side content filtering, such as ad blocking. In operation, the technique operates on a server-side of a client-server communication path to provide real-time detect the existence of a client filter (e.g., an ad blocker plug-in) through transparent request exchanges, and then to mitigate (defeat) that filter through one or operations designed to modify the HTML response body or otherwise obscure URLs. Preferably, the publisher (the CDN customer) defines one or more criteria of the page resources being served by the overlay (CDN) and that need to be protected against the client-side filtering.